While 74% of the surveyed employers think their branding strategy has been successful, 67% employees feel otherwise
June 22, 2015: "I have 5 pre-placement offers, offering seven figure salaries – Why should I join you?" a final year student at a top tech institute quipped at a job interview. Companies are in a competitive battle not just for sales but also for recruiting high-end talent well.
Employer branding has today become more vital than ever to attract talent. But are the strategies companies employ giving them results? Do employees find their strategies effective and convincing? Or is there a perception gap?
TimesJobs conducted a TJinsite Survey on Employer-Branding Perceptions, which threw up good news as well as bad news in terms of how companies are adopting employer branding as the war for talent continues to heat up.
The good news: 64 per cent of surveyed organizations claim to have a clear and well-designed employer-branding strategy in place and 74 per cent say they are happy with their strategies.
The bad news: 67 per cent of the surveyed employees do not think their employer has a winning employer-branding strategy in place. Most employees find their company’s current strategies unconvincing. Only 23 per cent rated the strategies as convincing while 10 per cent label their company’s strategy as poor, reports TimesJobs.
So, while employers are upbeat about their employer-branding strategies and are even acknowledging success, there is a significant gap between what they think and what employees feel about their employers’ brand.
In fact, only 42 per cent of the surveyed employees said they would recommend their company to a friend, reveals the TimesJobs report.
So where are the gaps?
TimesJobs’ study shows that while current branding strategies appeal to experienced professionals but entry and mid-level candidates are not quite happy with them.
"The workplace paradigm is changing, the millennial generation thrives in a hyper-connected 24X7 world, where information and opinions blend into a single news stream to create employee perceptions. To build powerful employer-brands requires consistent communication of the Employer Value Proposition. Companies have to work with greater speed and transparency, which is only possible with wide scale adoption of an open culture and a flat hierarchy. " explains Vivek Madhukar, COO, TimesJobs.com
Successful? Or not?
• 74 per cent organizations rate their employer branding as successful while 67 per cent of the employees think otherwise
• 55 per cent of startups & SMEs term their employer-branding strategy as successful while only 36 per cent employees from such firms feels so.
• 45 per cent large organizations believe they have winning employer-branding strategy in place while 64 per cent employees from large organizations feel so.
The media channel
• 68 per cent organizations use social media to connect with employees but only 56 per cent employees think they are effective.
• On the other hand, while 32 per cent employers focus on career portals and company rating/peer review websites as ways to improve their employer-brand, 44 per cent of the employees find these a direct & effective media.
The money challenge
•While 70 per cent organizations state clearly that budget is not a constraint to their employer-branding initiatives, still, 62 per cent employees feel budgets are the challenge their organizations face to put up a successful branding plan in place.
At a time most India Inc. employers are struggling to attract the right talent, having a powerful employer-brand is of critical value and utmost importance. Consequently, there is a greater need to understand and analyze the gap in perception of employer and employees. This TJinsite survey was conducted across 560 organizations and 800 employees in India. The complete TJinsite Report is freely available for download on the TimesJobs.com website – http://content.timesjobs.com/employer-branding-time-to-bridge-the-gap/
About TimesJobs.com:
TimesJobs.com, India’s leading career and recruitment portal, is one of the best-selling online ventures of the Times of India Group. Conceived and launched in 2004, TimesJobs.com currently has a candidate database of more than 20 million registered job-seekers across levels and functions who clock-in over 40 million page views a month.
TimesJobs.com is positioning itself as an engagement platform and knowledge resource for insights, information, analysis and opinions on the recruitment market. Well-known for its product innovations and unmatched deliverables, TimesJobs.com has pioneered the platforms of:
– JobBuzz.in for candidate engagement with company reviews and ratings
– TechGig.com as India’s leading IT network for careers, coding and competitions
– StepAhead for career assessment and enhancement services
– RecruiteX as the definitive demand and supply recruitment index
– The TJinsite knowledge series and a lot more.
TimesJobs.com serves a corporate customer base of more than 25,000 clients from across the globe. It has been serving clients like HCL, IBM, Yamaha, Godrej, HSBC, Mahindra, Bajaj Allianz, TCS and Thomson Reuters to name a few.